


On the care and keeping of wizards

by UndisputedPokerChamp



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Eldritch, Newt is a good mom, even to creatures with no equivalent concept, what has he gotten himself into?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-11-05 06:12:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17913314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UndisputedPokerChamp/pseuds/UndisputedPokerChamp





	1. Chapter 1

  The great one's have their disagreements like any other creature. Even in the infinite cosmos, there are disputes, power struggles. It was one of these affairs that started everything. Specifically, a shunned spawn of a great one had sought revenge on their creator, stealing and hiding their newest brood in a fit of jealousy. The helpless infant was left for dead on one of the few planets with thinking life, the sheer multitude of souls and emotions making navigation of it through the mindscape(their, for lack of a better term, ‘natural habitat’,) annoying for even stronger entities. The child, still fragile and unfocused, was lost among all the noise and activity.

  Their creator mourned, destroying one of their unruly spawn’s most favoured solar systems in retribution. They would have liked to destroy the elder spawn as well, but there are codes of conduct among even gods. The baby was most likely dead-but it was not the elder spawn that killed them, giving them no grounds for execution.

  The universe moved on. The creator could be satisfied with their revenge and continued with their existence. One life lost, no matter who, mattered little in the face of eternity.

  
  


  On the planet, the child screamed in terror. They were alone, surrounded by strange minds with strange thoughts and no creator to guard them. They screamed and screamed, hoping they would be saved.

  
  


“Awful crowded in here tonight, what’s the occasion?”

  The man was a stranger to the town, only popping in for the last week. He had a briefcase he carried with him everywhere, odd enough even in a more industrialized place. All that said, he was better behaved than most people who came to the still. What could the harm be?

“Whole town’s had a nightmare yesterday. Most of these folks are hoping if they’re too drunk to stand they’ll only black out tonight. I’d join them, if I wasn’t on ‘puke duty’”

  The stranger’s face shifted to one of unbridled curiosity, he’d made it clear early on he was more than interested by whatever story or folktale of beasts someone had to tell. Seemed rather obsessed about things like that.

“The whole town you say? Just last night?”

“Nothing like this ever happened before, not to my knowledge.”

  The barkeep already knew well enough from the gleam in the stranger’s eye that he wanted to know more.

“Everybody, and I do mean everybody, had one.I’m pretty sure my neighbour Milly only did as well as she did because her kid woke up and refused to go back to bed. You know it’s bad when the heavy sleepers do worse than the light one's.”

  The stranger was muttering excitedly to himself at this point. The guy really wore his heart on his sleeve in a way most people sadly grow out of. He pointed out a group of tables in the establishment.

“I’m pretty sure I heard somebody over there asking if anyone was outside late last night, maybe she has a clue for you.”

 

“Yes, my daughter had some friends home for a sleepover and told me about a comet they saw out her bedroom window. They were adamant it looked like it hit nearby, but if that were true nobody’d be complaining about nightmares. They’d be complaining about the noise!”

  Newt followed the lady to her house, where she pointed out the window to her daughter’s bedroom. Newt drew out a notebook and compass and marked down what direction from the town the girls had seen the comet. He thanked the woman for her time and scampered off to look for it.

  He’d been thinking nonstop about what he knew so far. If it was a creature behind the nightmares, what could it possibly be? Urders and flakspinners were out, their habitat was nowhere near here. Yggillo were solitary animals, and could only affect one person at night, another strike. A colony of brakkenbursters could explain it, but the population size required to create full-on night terrors didn’t just appear overnight! 

  Yes, the more he thought about it, the more he began to think he was on the trail of something he hadn’t seen before. It clearly had some powerful abilities to influence a town single handed. 

  Pickett poked his head out of Newt’s pocket and squeaked for his attention. When Newt looked at the bowtruckle he pointed a bit off their current the path and whined, before placing his hands to cover where ears would be on a human. Newt stopped in his tracks and listened. Sure enough he could make out a soft whimpering sound among the trees. Ever the kind soul he is, the question of whether it was human or beast barely cross his mind.

  The first sign he noticed was a cold sweat running down his neck. He supposed it was to be expected given its nightmare-inducing power. The next was the forest halting any signs of life. Before there would be a rustle from mundane hares fleeing here and there, as well as birds taking flight. Those were conspicuously absent at this point. He pressed forward in a strange sort of desperation. He thought in passing that it was unusual for him to panic like this.

  The last marker was the plants being shriveled up and rotted. He stepped through the line of dead foliage and found the creature behind all the strangeness.

  It was small, the size of a dollar bill, or thereabouts. The part that he  _ assumed _ was its head looked like a tiny shield. It was rather blobby, with tentacles(?) wriggling from it. It almost looked like an unusually large specimen of hairy flobberworm. Against his better judgement, he removed his gloves before picking it up. The skin contact sent small shocks throughout his body. It quickly wrapped itself around his left hand as the shocks worsened. Somewhere through the haze Newt wondered if this was how he would die, having just seen a new species of magical creature. It wasn’t the worst way to go.

  But what of his creatures? There wasn’t anyone to come find him if he perished, they’d be running wild in this wilderness indefinitely once the niffler picked the lock again. He didn’t want that. There had to be a way to save them! There had to!

  As his genuine emotions of fear and protectiveness hit, the shocks reduced to tiny crackles. The creature held its grip on Newt’s hand. He felt considerably calmer now. Hopefully it wouldn’t do that very often in the future.

  He carefully retrieved a paper and quill to sketch the creature. It was as accurate as he could manage, considering every time he looked away some feature of it had changed or disappeared. Perhaps he should invest in one of those photograph machines. As it were he made sure to note its shapeshifting and mark this image as first in a series.

“Nightmares and changing shape, could you by any chance be related to a boggart?”

  You’d be surprised how often simply asking a question can have creatures give up their secrets. It shifted again, heading up his arm like water flowing backwards. Once it reached the base of his neck it gave another shock, only, for some reason it didn’t hurt this time. He smelled something like… the pudding he’d eaten at Hogwarts. Then it was the taste of pumpkin juice, then the sound of his shoes walking the halls to his next class. With a start, he remembered where he was and what was currently investigating him, but the memories kept coming. The DADA classroom, his teacher, a chest opening up to reveal… 

  It drew back from his neck. When it reached out again he heard very clearly in his own voice-

_ It’s not what it looks like, I swear! _

  The same memory played on loop. It went for his memory of boggarts after his question, now this, it could clearly understand him well enough.

“I see, not a boggart.”

  It relaxed and returned to his hand, seemingly satisfied its point was made. He allowed it to stay where it was while he just observed, content in his new discovery.


	2. Chapter 2

  Eventually feeding time rolled around and Newt had to go inside his case for a moment. When he tried to put the creature down it let him know what it thought of that idea by sticking to his hand like glue. He sighed and went in anyway. If it felt so strongly on the matter, then why not?

He could feel its contentment upon entering. So it liked the case, interesting. It was also kind enough to move so he could use his left hand again. He made sure to thank it for the consideration.

 

  It sat and sensed the area around it with interest. The cacophony of minds outside was dulled significantly, with a much,  _ much _ , reduced number to navigate within. It was still a lot, but compared to before it was a sweet reprieve. The one that held her physical form, her guardian,  _ lived _ to protect and nurture, a trait that, while making him a good choice, also meant they would have to  **_share_ ** . Their connection to him gave them knowledge of many new things, gender, species, magic, science, order, chaos, hybrids, study, madness, sanity, illness, ethics, philosophy, and on and on and on… 

  Yes. They were confident they had made the right choice in bonding with this  _ Newt/wizard/human/earthling/conservationist/magizoologist/researcher/brother/healer/parent,  _ there was a whole host of aspects to existence their original parent had no inkling of. It would take some time(another new concept)to sort through and internalize all their new parent’s knowledge. The old companion of their parent, Pickett, didn’t move a muscle. He’d been hiding in Newt’s coat when they met the pair and there he was still. It was easy to understand why he refused to show himself. They had been confused at two healthy, mature minds moving as one entity, and may have tried to drive both away before they realized it was one mind, a good mind, that had touched them.

  Eventually Newt coaxed Pickett out of his hiding place. There was something, a  _ trust _ between them, the same trust that the other minds had with Newt, but stronger, with something else thrown in. The only comparable thing was the niffler, with their mind sending out thoughts of  _ family. _ Everything since they were torn from their paren--- hmm, that word wasn’t quite right. It had too many parts and associations that their relationship lacked.---  _ creator _ was alien and strange. Then again, so was their creator in their first moments of existence. They had learned and adapted then, there was no reason they couldn’t now.

  But creator and Newt were so different. With creator, they had been able to guess at how to imitate and please them, they couldn’t have done that with Newt. His very essence flowed and shimmered at the slightest whim. Creator was more controlled, their mind went where they willed it, no more or less. Newt would reach out for things out of reach, or even at nothing. His thoughts were all tangled together like, like,  _ open archways connecting rooms in a mansion.  _ Everything had a unrestricted route to everything. They had to actively stretch their own mind just to accept its existence, integration of their parent and teacher’s knowledge would be an undertaking they expected would take much longer than if they hadn’t been lost.

  But as Newt’s mind reached out to them and pickett simultaneously, they decided that this was the better of the two possibilities. Maybe they had already internalized more than they realized, because they  **wanted.**

 

  They hadn’t yet realized they had the ability to influence their physical form, so Newt ended up with them wrapped around his arm several times like a ribbon. His sketches of it grew by the day as it explored reality and new shapes and images were discovered. The first time he had left the case it had practically apparated onto his face in a clear expression of stress. It had calmed itself with a few more uncomfortable shocks,(it seemed to be some kind of comfort action, or bonding behaviour, like how a baby is calmed by contact with their mother.)    

  Thankfully, it didn’t stay afraid for very long. It was now most content to tag along with him, and even had the thought to hide itself under his coat when they joined civilisation. He was worried though, how would it react to being on a ship? The comet signalling its arrival would point to it being more a creature of the sky than the water.

  They paused in their exploration at this thought. Newt had spoken of the same thing twice as if it were two separate things? The knowledge of creator had taught them about how worlds flowed into each other in an infinite cosmos, how one could rise from the depths of one onto the shore of another and vice versa. The more they learned of Newt’s mind, the more aware they became of just how much there was to understand. Not only was there more concepts than they knew of, each seemed to have multiple understandings. Their mind was already constantly sore from the strain of unfamiliar thought structures, it would simply have to wait. Wait like so many other things.  _ frustrating.  _

  They slept, sure their Newt would keep them safe while they grew, as they set to work on their first priority, how the  _ fuck _ (useful word, very versatile,) they were supposed to integrate an entirely new way of experiencing reality.

  They only awoke when Newt’s thoughts turned to memories of failure. The grief coming from their parent shocked them from their slumber, and they were immediately assaulted by all that happened during their nap. Arrested? Secrecy? Laws? Jacob? Who’s  **Jacob?** More importantly, what’s this obscurus that hurt  **their** Newt? In their rage, they shoved their way into Newt’s head searching for relevant knowledge, greedily consuming every memory, every  _ detail _ of what they missed. Their parent didn’t feel like this before their nap, so it must have happened after. They immersed themselves completely in an other’s mind, an action uncomfortable for  _ any _ great one, let alone a mere fetus of one.

 

  First, there was pain. The pain of one's body, mind, and soul being stretched past any safe limit, of being pushed to the very edge of your abilities, then further. Any mind, regardless of origin, is in its nature infinite. To immerse completely into an other is to know an infinity besides your own. It is where madness is born, the incongruencies of the self and the other placed in direct conflict, the mind forced to grow infinitely to accommodate it.

  The very same was true for them. It is fortunate that madness comes in many forms, and that madness itself is only a deviation from what is normal. If they or Newt had become violent under such stress, this could have gone seriously downhill. As it were, they held onto their wits well enough to submerge themselves in Newt’s past. They dreamed of New York, secrets, threats of murder, a new friend, memories… 

**_PAIN!_ **

  The same instant it began, the dream finished.


End file.
